


Family Rites

by tothevictorgoesthespoils



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-29
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-20 04:58:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,236
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3637599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothevictorgoesthespoils/pseuds/tothevictorgoesthespoils
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Frances, this, you were meant for this" and he hands her off and turns, leaving her side cold, before she has the chance to be overcome and clutch her bother and cry and hold him because the lives off all the men in their family have always been so finite (and if only she had been born a man, Vincent wouldn’t have been meant for this).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Family Rites

Their father had passed six weeks before Frances’ wedding and a year and a half after Vincent’s. 

He finds her, before the carriage comes, out of the black silk she has adorned the past month in mourning and her face the softest he has ever seen since she was a child.

She is staring at her self in the mirror, stoic despite the incessant chattering of their mother and the bustle of servants around them with lilies arranged in her hair that looks to him so much like a halo.

"I’m going to be a wife today." She looks at him through her reflection. 

"And you’ll be absolutely wonderful no doubt." Vincent steps into the room, shutting the door with an unceremonial click behind him.

"Things would have been so much better if I was born a man, wouldn’t it?"

Vincent laughs and comes up behind her to place a kiss on her cheek. She will step out of the manor as a Phantomhive for the last time after today and he will miss the glares she delivered to him over breakfast when he walked in just a few minutes late and her constant demands Tanaka find a barber because Vincent’s hair was far too long to be ever be appropriate for an Earl.

"Dare I say, even as a young woman Frances, you are much more willful and stronger than I could ever be."

She doesn’t smile, she doesn’t return the affection. She has never been, and never will be a doting sister to him. (Her devolution came in sneers, light jabs with her elbow to his stomach when he was slouching, fencing swords to his throat when she triumphed,) She turns to look at him and frowns, his dark hair is not slicked back like she had asked of him, this is the first time she realizes that they look nothing alike. 

"You weren’t meant for this Vincent."

He smiles despite the sad crinkle in his eyes, “No, I’m afraid, but alas we cannot change what we were born into.” He cups her face in his hand, a sign of affection she allows only just this once and then shifts to take her arm in his and begins to lead her out of her bedroom in the Phantomhive manor for the last time.

She hears her mother scuffling about, a mass of taffeta and nervous energy, somewhere a servant has shattered glass downstairs. There are carriages lined outside of the manor, ushers hustling and leading excited and gleeful family inside them. She can hear the church bells ring, far away, in the distance. She does not know if it is the corset of the thickness in the air, but Frances feels like she is going to be smothered before the day is done.

"Out of the two of us, I always felt as if I was the older one." She blurs out, she realizes this is going to be a day of confessions between the two of them. Vincent is silent for a moment, and she wonders if he still reads like he used to when he was younger. She never catches him lounging by the rose garden on Sunday mornings reading anymore when he should have joined their family at mass in church like a proper Christian. His hands, even through the leather gloves. are rougher, and he spends hours in their father’s (Vincent’s now) office with letters, ultimatums, and business proposals spread out on the mahogany of the expansive table. She wonders if Rachel is lonely now, she wonders if Rachel knows what the man she has married will become, she wonders if Rachel has prepared herself for it. 

"Yes, I feel the same too. You are so much better at everything I am. Alexis is a brave man for wanting to spend eternity with you." 

She glares at him and nudges his his shin with her heel.

"Careful Vincent, remember than I am a much better shot than you." There has never been a moment, however poignant, that she has given up an opportunity to chide him.

He leads her downstairs where their mother and Rachel are waiting. Rachel gasps and runs over to clasp Frances’ face between her hands and kisses her on the cheek. “Frances, you look absolutely stunning. Alexis is such a lucky man.” She smiles, Rachel is newly pregnant, dewey and glowing with the promise of motherhood, and despite how much she loves them both she cannot bring herself to be happy for either of them.

Vincent is, as always, the proper gentleman as and helps Frances into the carriage, laughing at her hesitancy in the elaborate lace and pearl beadwork. Rachel and their mother soon follow. 

When they arrive at the church, her heart is fluttering despite herself, and Rachel places the bouquet of roses and lilies and wildflowers in her hand and the procession begins with the lavish ceremony fitting only for a marquees and his soon-to-be marchioness. Vincent walks her down the aisle, because their father has passed into the darkness, and despite her training, her years of rigid self-discipline, determination to be temperate and strong, her heart is racing and she cannot breathe and suddenly there are tears clouding her vision that she cannot control. 

She barely notices the men and women standing in the aisle in awe of how beautiful and radiant she looks, and she almost misses the look of absolute devotion and reverence in in Alexis’ eyes. In only a year of courtship, she knows that Alexis is a man that will love her unconditionally until she is old, weary, and time has degraded all of her stern beauty and transformed it into wrinkled skin translucent like the flower petals scattered throughout the isle. 

Vincent chuckles under his breath, and whispers to her. “Just breathe, Frances. He lives for only you..” A soft, barely-audible, sob catches in her throat at his warm and reassuring voice as they reach the alter. Vincent squeezes her arm and holds her there for the smallest of moments, it so quick and so very fleeting (like life itself as a Phantomhive), but she would be a fool not to catch it’s significance.

She looks at him through the gauze and tulle of her veil, she sees that he is an Earl now, the still-newly christened patriarch of the Phantomhives and as Vincent lets go of her hand and places it in Alexis’ palm and gently nudges her forward, she feels like she is abandoning him, leaving him to fend for himself in the darkness and the blood that has just claimed the heads of every generation, stepping out of their birth right, of their shadow to simply be the dutiful wife of a knight.

He kisses her on the cheek and whispers, “Frances, this, you were meant for this" and he hands her off and turns, leaving her side cold, before she has the chance to be overcome and clutch her bother and cry and hold him because the lives off all the men in their family have always been so finite (and if only she had been born a man, Vincent wouldn’t have been meant for this).

She feels it, even before she utters the vows to Alexis and swears herself over to him before God, that she has lost her brother and the hope of his unborn child even before the fire comes.


End file.
